Adrian Paul, an orc from Weta, Stan Lee and Kevin Sorbo were some of the attractions at Salt Lake Comic Con 2013

Why would Walt Want to create a city?

In his presentation at Salt lake Comic Con 2013, Paul F. Anderson discussed what Walt Disney intended EPCOT to be – the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. “It was originally intended to be a city,” says Anderson. Marty Sklar coined the phrase “Waltopia.” Anderson says that he couldn’t understand why Walt would want to deal with the creation of a city. There would be a lot of red tape to go through. It would seem to be too much work for little to no payoff. The Anderson started to take a closer look at Walt’s business life. Walt followed a progression of innovation and forward motion. He started with putting a live action actress into a cartoon with the Alice stories early in his career. He then created synchronized sound cartoons, color cartoons, the multi-plane camera and the first animated full length feature –Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which everyone called Walt’s folly. “You will go blind from watching and hour and a half cartoon,” Anderson says was one of the criticisms of Snow White before it came out. During its run, it became the highest grossing film of all time until it was displaced by Gone with the Wind. Fantasia was next innovation. “Every step of the way, he is doing something different,” says Anderson. “He wanted to innovate, invent and improve.” When the war came, Walt created Victory through Airpower, a film that talked about how the allies could win against the axis powers. Some historians postulate that the film “saved tens of thousands of lives on all sides,” says Anderson. Walt went on innovating with The Winged Scourge, a film about protecting against mosquito borne illnesses; Seal Island, the first of its kind nature documentary that won an Academy Award; the Man in Space series that was edutainment. With Disneyland, Walt changed an entire industry, but that wasn’t all. “He is changing leisure time,” says Anderson. Then came the invention of audio-animatronics based on some of the technology used in Navy submarines. Then Anderson hit on the quintessential reason. Walt was a father. “Walt was thinking about his kids and his grandkids and the type of world they would grow up in,” says Anderson. One of the experiences that urged Walt in the direction of building a community happened when he was staying at a hotel in New York. A garbage truck woke him up early in the morning, and it got him to thinking about why it has to be that way. Read about Walt’s Inspirations.